Meal Planning....It Helps to Be Organized

 Now that I'm a working woman again, the task of meal planning and grocery shopping becomes a little more complicated. I'm blessed that my husband shares the cooking and the shopping. I have found when we aren't organized we end up running to the store almost daily. This is a money and time waster so I'm trying to get organized.

Since I've been back to school/work, I have to go to market on Saturday mornings. We try to buy as much of our food at market as we can. Since I can't just pop in any old time I want, I have to be organized by Saturday morning. So I find a Friday pm or early Saturday am date with my recipe collection to work out well. 

I recently organized my printed recipes into a binder which I hope will help streamline my meal planning. I also find that if I try to stay with one source for the week's meals it keeps things simple. This week I've chosen a Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine that I've had for about a year. It has lots of fall recipes, including several that use butternut squash which we harvested from our garden in the last few weeks. 

Here you can see the method to my madness. My mother-in-law likes to comment on the "goldness" of my personality (I like things in order) and this really showcases that side of me. But, hey, I've gotta be me! So onto my method. First I decide how many meals I need to plan for and if there are any evenings that we need easy meals or no meal due to our schedules. I generally plan for 6 or 7 meals at a time. I then just let my fingers do the walking through the recipes. I also keep in mind what is in season and what I already have on hand. We buy our meat in bulk for our freezer so that makes shopping one step easier. 

When I choose the recipes that I want for the week, I write them down along with the recipe book and page number so whoever is cooking can easily find the recipe. I then make my lists. You got it right, I make two lists. One is for market and one for the grocery store. With list in hand I make two trips and our shopping is complete for the week. 

Although I don't always feel like sitting down to meal plan, I do generally enjoy it. I am always happy during the week that the planning is complete because I certainly have less brain power to make meal decisions after work every day. 

I'd love to hear how you do your meal planning. Is there a method you use? Do you live close to a daily market and can shop fresh daily? Do you grow most of your food? Are you a monthly planner? Let me hear from you!

Putting Up....again

My mother froze corn every year of my life. In fact, she is still doing it. She makes the BEST chicken corn soup EVER with the frozen corn. To be honest, I refuse to eat corn that comes from the grocery store. It has to be fresh or frozen fresh or I'm leavin' it behind. That being said, I love a warm cup of soup for lunch during the winter and decided to get my corn on the cob this morning. 

Here's Mike helping me husk. We probably should have done this outside but it didn't make too much of a mess in the sunroom. The husks went right into the compost.

Yummy close up. I bought 4 dozen ears.

 I realized that my kitchen is perfectly set up for blanching the corn. Above you can see the pots that are not quite boiling and the corn ready to be added.

 Turn to the middle and we have two sinks full of ice water (Mike was on the ice run when I took the photo).

 Finally, the draining section to the right.

 We set up the card table just outside to cut the corn off the cob. I wanted to get a photo of Nathan and I cutting and Nolan and Mike blanching but my fingers were too messy.

Here's the bounty for the freezer. Just over 8 quarts. That'll be enough for 4 pots of chicken corn soup this winter. I wonder if that's enough?

Putting Up

What a strange phrase that is. It is, however, one used to describe preparing your food for winter when there isn't any fresh garden from which to pick.

Above you can see what we've been doing today. Nolan and Mike went to the Tomato Barn (isn't that the best thing you ever heard of? A Tomato BARN?). They used all of our homegrown large tomatoes, the tomatoes from our CSA (3 pounds) and a large box of 'maters from the Tomato Barn to make a double batch of sauce. Yum! After dinner (which was cooked on our new charcoal grill) I threw on the mass of bell peppers from the CSA. They are lovely and roasted to perfection. My good friend Connie recommended grilling them whole and throwing them in a freezer bag as is. After defrosting, peel and seed before using. What a GREAT idea! Thanks, Connie! This was the easiest ever. Since we already had the grill going, it was a cinch to add the peppers when the food was finished. 


Finally, I mixed up a batch of bread dough from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Of course, this is a library book. According to this book, you can mix up a pot of bread dough in minutes, let it sit on the counter for 2 hours, put it in the fridge and cut a loaf's  worth everyday for fresh bread. Each day the bit you cut off needs to sit on the counter for 20 minutes and then bake for another 20. Wow. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out. It is sitting on my counter at the moment.


Just when I think I can't be a stay at home mom and work full time I have days that so many things get accomplished. Did I mention I cut both my boys hair tonight, too? That's at least a $40 savings. I'm glad we brought those boys up right. They sure do make life easy now that they are teens. 


I'm off for an ice cream run. We're eating healthy but it is summer.....gotta have some 'cream. Have a wonderful weekend. I may hit the sewing room when I get back from the store.

Pesto...It's not beautiful

but it is tasty. I've never made pesto before for several reasons. The first reason is that I never really liked it. I always thought it tasted like a pine tree. Many people use pine nuts in their pesto. I think pine nuts are very overpowering and, like I said, make me feel like I'm eating a pine tree. Not a flavor I enjoy.

I then learned that you don't have to put in the pine nuts. No brainer, right? Well, sometimes I'm such a rule follower that I can't think outside the box (or the recipe as the case may be). The problem then became the fact that I didn't have a food processor. 

Saturday at Homefields it was pick as much basil as you want day. So I decided we would make pesto. Now, I have quite a bit of basil in my yard but probably not quite enough to make pesto without eliminating the entire plant. So, we cut A LOT of basil. You can see it in the above photo along with the other ingredients. I chose to use walnuts instead of pine nuts. Pesto is really a personal taste sort of food. Use what you will. I used parmesan and romano cheeses, walnuts, basil and olive oil.

Above is the pesto after Nolan and I food processed the heck out of it. As I said in my title, pesto isn't really beautiful. Nolan, who likes to ask important questions at dinner, asked what we thought was a kids least favorite food color. Green, of course. Followed by a close second of yellow (we had zucchini and yellow squash as our side).

Well, once I had my bowl of pesto, it occurred to me that I should freeze it. I then remembered that people freeze it in ice cube trays. Well, right now our extra ice cube tray is full of coffee. What to do? Hey....use muffin tins!

 Freeze over night, pop out and throw them in a plastic ziplock and you have pesto for the year! I'm hoping to use it in soups and on poultry throughout the year. Yum!

CSA Bounty

 Today was the first CSA pickup! Yeah! We have been eagerly awaiting the local garden bounty. Mike and I hesitated for a long time to join a CSA because we tend to eat the same veggies over and over. We just weren't sure that we would eat the vegetables that we had paid for. Recently, we have been doing a lot of reading about food and changing our food buying and food eating habits. That includes trying new things and eating seasonally. So, we went ahead and joined Goodwill at Homefield Farms.  


Here's the bounty we received. While Mike and I gathered our goods in the barn, the boys went out to the strawberry field to pick our box. They've really enjoyed being on the farm and getting to pick their own food. Homefields has several gardens that are for the shareholders to pick themselves. I love that, especially for the boys. There's certainly no fresher food than the food you pick yourself.


As you can see we had lettuce and garlic scape, chard, bok choy, strawberries and kale. It was the kale that worried me a little. I've never eaten it. None of us ever did. 

 Here you can see what I did with it. I chopped the firmer veggies and sautéed them first (onion, bok choy, garlic scape) and then added the kale. I used sesame oil which adds a little flavor to the dish. After the whole thing wilted, I added some fresh ground salt and pepper.

Mike was grilling burgers while I was dealing with the veggies. You can see my plate full above. Now, I'll admit, these veggies aren't much to look at but WOW were they delicious. I'm looking forward to making it again another night.

Here's the best dessert of all. Fresh strawberries and blueberries. I bought the blueberries at market on Tues. and I can't imagine they are local but they were delicious with the strawberries. Now I have a hankering for a berry smoothie for breakfast. Yum.